How to Write Poetry — Show and Tell
We are half certain that you have explored the top results on how to write poetry (if this is not on top at that time) and haven’t got exactly the thing. You’ve surely learnt some tricks and habits that you should practice if you want to write often i.e. if you’re a rebel that wouldn’t take help from generative AI besides taking a peek every now and then. You know you are a staunch creativist.
Here, we will screw open a poem. We’ll understand what the poet felt, thought and wrote, and how you can formulate a poem for yourself. This is our attempt to show, not just tell how one can muster all emotions, gift wrap them in phrases or rhyme and present them to who they’re writing for. Remember, you decide the distance you want to cover with your words and the heights you want to reach with your imagination, the volume of your experiences you want to depict & weight will follow.
When Vanya Sidana, took it upon her to gift her parents a poem on behalf of her brother and herself, she had to twitch a few brain muscles. All she had in the beginning was the idea, deep fried in emotions. She had what flashbacks normally represent in our minds, but it was all a blob.
Let’s see how she chiseled it to form a poem with mechanical (non-electronic :D) literary devices.
She thinks of her parents as the chief comforting people through dark times. Her parents offer her voice when she needs to hear something about things she had been cooking in her mind for long and things that need resolution from some kind of discomfort. So she gives them the status of stars who emit their light and have a static position and stand. Both in their own ways bring light into the children’s lives and the use of the word stars concisely sums it up. So she begins with,
In the darkest sky being the stars you are,
on your own you radiate,
But when you come together, you make our universe illuminate.
(Note the use of metaphor, the poet calls her parents stars.)
She knows deep in her heart that their love for their parents will grow as they understand them better; and she goes,
Like curious astronomers we’ll love you forever,
(Note the use of simile here, the poet compares her future self to that of a curious astronaut.)
Next, she recalls her parents’ everyday role of guidance in things like conjectures, their (the poet and her brother’s) behaviour with friends and family members, forming habits, being blatantly truthful and doing so without a glitch yet being kind and friendly, drawing boundaries and not being wasteful being a very few of them. She tries to sum it up by calling them their North Star. The essence is that the North Star or Polaris offers solidity and is the most helpful in navigation. It is readily visible just like their parents are always ready to resolve things when their compasses need direction. And she simply writes,
Thank you for being our North Star,
(Did you notice the use of metaphor North Star here?)
As a teenager, she knows they will have to face life hurdles and challenges and in an attempt to make all their efforts better, they will need the most trusted source of guidance that their parents can be. So she goes,
Like sailors on an endeavour, your guidance forever we’ll treasure,
(Did you see what she compared her brother and herself with?)
She is grateful for the love that is one of the invisible forces keeping the family together despite differences in opinions, habits and actions. She observes the love of their parents to be the factor for calling their collective existence a family and ends her poem with a simple,
Your love is our gravity and light that binds us 5 forever.
So the complete poem becomes,
In the darkest sky being the stars you are
On your own you radiate,
But when you come together you make our universe illuminate.
Like curious astronomers we’ll love you forever,
Thank you for being our North Star,
Like sailors on an endeavour your guidance forever we’ll treasure,
Your love is our gravity and light that binds us 5 forever.
- Written by Vanya Sidana
With this, we hope we’ve brought you a tad closer to writing your own little (or lengthy) poem.
You can start with a topic of your choice.
Think about your strongest feeling for the topic, think of your stories with it. Can you condense your experiences in a few lines? Can you compare them with something that more of your readers will be able to understand? If you think a comparison is not needed, a simple story with rhythm will suffice.
Are you ready to write now?
